Christian Boehmer Anfinsen

Anfinsen, Christian Boehmer, 1916–95, American biochemist, b. Monessen, Pa., Ph.D. Harvard Medical School, 1943. He spent the early years of his career in brief research and fellowship positions at various medical institutions and agencies. In 1963 he joined the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases (NIAMD), where he headed the chemical biology laboratory until 1981. From 1983 until he died, he was a professor at Johns Hopkins. Anfinsen shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William Stein for his work on the enzyme ribonuclease, which catalyzes the hydrolysis of ribonucleic acid (RNA) into smaller components. He is credited with illuminating the connection between the molecular structure of the ribonuclease molecule and the biological function of this enzyme.